With over 8,000,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, Green Day has a musical reach that expands over multiple generations, genres, and demographics. Forming in 1989, the band’s fanbase is one that spans decades; from the truest of ‘90’s kids’ to children of the 2000’s and even more.

To senior Shreya Talukder, Green Day has always been more than just angst filled songs to sing in the shower. On October 23rd, Talukder was finally able to see one of her favorite groups in person after years of loyalty to the band and their music. Her heart began to race from when she clicked the ‘purchase tickets now’ button on Ticketmaster.com, until the very second she got home from the show itself.

“The day of the concert, I woke up and I was like ‘Okay, I am going to see Green Day today.’ It didn’t feel real until we got to the venue,” Talukder said. “Once we stepped foot outside of the Aragon everything just hit me.”

The image of the big blocky lettering on venue signs is not one that is unfamiliar to Talukder and her sister.  After seeing so many shows, the duo has taken numerous pictures of artists’ names lit up on the sign of the Aragon Ballroom. Finally snapping a polaroid picture of Green Day’s name on any venue’s sign was not something she had never thought to be possible.

“We saw the sign flashing overhead, ‘Sold Out Tonight: Green Day’. We kind of just looked around, taking in the image of everyone in their Green Day t-shirts and they were all so excited,” Talukder said as a brilliant smile found its way to her face.

Recalling her jovial nature before actually seeing a band she has countless memories of: singing along to Holiday to the backseat of her parents car to listening to Boulevard of Broken Dreams, one of her favorite songs, while finishing her college applications during her senior year.

“We actually didn’t wait outside for long for this concert. Usually when my sister and I go to shows, we camp out for hours so we can make friends and sometimes meet the artists, but this time it was all about enjoying the music,” Talukder said. “We never really imagined ourselves seeing this band play live. We grew up with their music and because of the magnitude of them and their publicity, I never thought we’d get the chance to be in the same building as them.”

The velocity of the band and their influence seemed to dwarf the size of the venue as a wave of fans even parents swelled into the ballroom. Upon finally entering concert hall after waiting for what seemed like a second to the sisters, Talukder says that a cool wave of air mixed with excitement and anticipation filled the air when she finally made it through the door from outside.

“There was an excitement in the crowd that you don’t usually see at any other shows,” Ria Talukder, junior and Shreya’s sister, said. “We saw a lot of teenage boys that were dressed down like they were from California, we saw frat boys, and we saw 50 year old dads with their kids. The crowd was so diverse, which shows how massive the band is.”

The energy that pulsed through the crowd while the stage to light up, as well as their love for Green Day served as a uniting force that brought the fans together, no matter what walk of life they came from.

“In that moment, we were all the same,” Talukder said; a smile remained as her passion for the music and the connections she felt caused her voice to take on a more emotional tone. “Everyone was so connected. When they played the first notes of Boulevard of Broken Dreams, tears just started to well up in my eyes. I just kept thinking of all of the people that I’ve connected that song to.”

The song, one that the Talukder sisters have loved since their tween years, was one that reached out to the audience in a way that they agree could only be felt when seeing it played live.

“When I turned around during the chorus, I saw these two boys holding onto each other and crying. I felt so connected to them because we were all essentially crying our eyes out. But it was different because they were boys, and typically boys try not to cry, but you could tell that they didn’t care,” Talukder said. “Being able to experience all that was definitely very special and I’ll never be able to forget it.”